| Wednesday,
Quality control.
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42099865/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/>
The Drug Enforcement Administration
confirmed Tuesday that the agency seized the state of Georgia's supply of
a key lethal injection drug because of questions about how the stockpile
was imported to the U.S.
DEA spokesman Chuvalo Truesdell said he didn't know
if other states' supplies of sodium thiopental were being collected. The
seizure comes less than two months after a convicted killer in Georgia was
executed, despite raising questions about where the state had obtained the
drug and whether or not it had expired.
--- Roland Dobbins
Bureaucratic absurdity on stilts! I have trouble
believing this! Quality control! Why it might -- it might kill someone!
==
Now add this
The Iron Rule in action: FAA
booby traps airplane lavatories!
Hello Dr. Pournelle,
You might have noticed that the FAA, under the cover
of safety, had airlines remove the oxygen generator canisters from the
toilets of all passenger planes. They did it covertly under a secret
directive.
Curious minds want to know what is so dangerous in
having emergency oxygen in the toilets! This gives the answer:
http://tinyurl.com/deadlyprivies
It's an accurate yet amusing technical analysis of the
matter. You wrote many times about the dangers of chasing the wrong problem
and spending millions on illusory threats. This is a perfect example of an
expensive measure that leaves us with more, not less, risk than before.
And soon they will unionize and negotiate work
rules. The Republicans ought to defund this farce.
============
Wholesale prices up 1.6 pct. on steep rise in food -
Yahoo! Finance
Wholesale risk of rebellion rises...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wholesale-
prices-up-16-pct-on-apf-3777454020.html?x=0&.v=1
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan,KSC
Food prices will rise as we burn food to add
stuff to gasoline.
========
Fear vs Panic
You linked to a very interesting article showing the
Japanese perspective on the BBC's coverage of the earthquake. The writer
disputed many details, including the description of people as panic
stricken. The armchair TV viewer may be tempted to dismiss that as a
quibble.
However, I have recently been reading With the Old
Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, Eugene Sledge's memoir of serving with the
Marines in WWII. Writing about his initial reaction about going into combat
on Okinawa, his second campaign, Sledge specifically emphasized that while
he felt a high level of fear, it was not overlaid with the sense of
near-panic that he felt landing on Peleliu because this time he knew from
experience what was happening and when the only thing he could do was endure
it.
So that's why I'm in a more receptive frame of mind
for the writer's assertion, "There was no panic or 'the end is nigh'
sentiments. It was well rehearsed and everyone was doing exactly what they
had been trained to do." In life there is a difference between feeling fear
and feeling panic, if not in a TV studio.
--Mike Glyer
Japan and the US Fleet are doing what they are
trained to do: take all precautions one might reasonably take. Act as if
the threat is worse than it is, and in particular husband your resources:
don't expose your technical workers to any new radiation that would
increase their dose levels unless you have to.
Radiation scares hell out of rational people.
Having undergone a great deal of it recently I have some better
understanding than I used to.
The important thing is not to lose your nerve.
============
Qaddafi Forces Near Benghazi as Rebel Commander Says
World ‘Has Failed Us’ - Bloomberg
Wait, didn't these people not want our help? So they
lied or our media lied. I don't trust either...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/
2011-03-15/qaddafi-forces-near-benghazi
-as-rebel-says-world-failed-us-.html
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan,KSC
The Brits sent in some SAS specialists with
diplomatic passports to Benghazi. The rebels arrested them and expelled
them from the country. They didn't need no stinking help. But once
you have fired all your ammunition into the air, you must blame someone.
I understand that the young Egyptian rebels told
the Secretary of State to pound sand. A quarter or more of out foreign aid
goes to Egypt.
One does not always expect rationality in the
Middle East.
The great thing is not to lose your nerve.
===========
the situation in Japan keeps getting worse. Meanwhile, Obama does a B
Ball bracket on ESPN.
Jim Crawford
==
No, it's not getting worse
in Japan. It is not getting better as fast as we would like, but the
radiation releases peaked at acceptable levels and fell to quite low
ones. The rods are out of the reactors in 4 5 and 6 and we are now
dealing with spent fuel; it won't go critical, it won't produce enough
heat to melt anything real, and there will be no superheated steam.
Jerry Pournelle
Far, far more Japanese are
going to freeze to death for lack of electricity and intact housing than
will die from the fallout from a worst case scenario with the reactors. If
the lack of water and sanitation causes an epidemic, the deaths will be
orders of magnitude higher.
Your frying pan analogy is excellent. What has
provoked my concern is that keeping the frying pan cool seems to be taking
far more water than it should. My calcs show that the radioactive decay heat
of the fuel in a reactor core should have by now decayed to the point that a
garden hose would be insufficient to replace water lost to
evaporation/boiling but a fire hose would be more than adequate. The reactor
cores might be producing far more heat than my calcs predict do to ongoing
fission in the subcritical mass. There are a lot of isotopes (primarily
Pu-240) in the fuel rods that undergo spontaneous fission. Even in a
subcritical reactor, with say a .95 gain rate, the heat generated by fission
is not inconsequential. Alternatively and more seriously, the reactor
systems and the containment have some leakage. After riding out an 9.0
earthquake, this is to be expected.
The dramatic film footage of the upper thirds of the
reactor buildings blowing up is certainly not reassuring. Having these upper
structures referred to as a "containment" by industry spokesmen as well as
the media only adds to the anxiety. I would think once the first building
exploded the plant operators would decide that releasing mildly radioactive
gases is preferable to risking another hydrogen explosion. Aside from
potential damage to the cooling systems, the damage from the explosions make
it impossible to defile the reactors. Most people are left wondering if
Homer Simpson is running the plants.
Your analogy of each reactor year of waste being
equivalent to a Tsar bomb might not be exact but it is informative. The
energy equivalent is about the same but the spectrum of fission products
from prompt neutrons is different than for thermal neutrons. However, your
analogy is reasonably accurate. That monstrous Tsar bomb lofted vaporized
dirt with condensed fission products to such a high altitude that by the
time the material precipitated out the radioactivity had decayed by several
orders of magnitude. The delay time for radioactive steam from the nuclear
plant to condense is highly dependent on the weather. You will recall that
while the Hiroshima produced nearly no fallout, the Nagasaki bomb did
because a rainstorm condensed and washed out the fission products. As long
as the wind is blowing the fallout out tobsea, the consequences will be
minimal. A shift in the wind that blows then fallout towards Tokyo combined
with weather that precipitates it will be a problem.
Discussions of what is a safe dose of radiation is
dependent on context. An elderly sic fi writer with brain cancer choosing to
expose himself to massive doses is acceptable. The same dose involuntarily
administered to a thousand, young, healthy people is not.
Perhaps the carnage to the refugees from hypothermia,
starvation and disease will ve so severe that we will be able to have a
rational discussion about the risks of nuclear power. The new Westinghouse
SP 1000 reactor would not be having cooling issues doubt loss of power.
Jim Crawford
We have tested some older designs to destruction.
By "we" I mean the human race. We will learn much about reactor designs
from this. The way to do that is to get all the data, and we don't have
that. We will also learn more about possible accidents to spent fuel
storage facilities. When it is done we will know more about nuclear power
safety.
All energy industries have costs in both money
and lives. None are completely safe. If we want to return to a low energy
society those who impose that will need all the guns they can get because
some will not want to live that way. They can hope for mercenaries who
will fight for a lower standard of living. The performance of the
Wisconsin Democrats is a harbinger for how hard civilized people will
fight to keep what they have.
============
"A Vermont neighborhood is being stalked by a
renegade gray squirrel."
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110316/
ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_squirrel_attack>
Perhaps I be a wee cynic, but when this is one of the
mornings headlines, my Knowledge Bump whispers "The "crisis" is past, the
"fever" has broken, they are back to dredging up silly stuff to feed the
beast."
If you can't scare 'em with nukes in Japan, then blitz
'em with ""When Squirrels Attack!"
Hey, was it a Flying Squirrel? Can we get a No Fly
Zone established for Vermont?
Oh, The Humanity!
Petronius
All is well. Fearless Leader will send in Boris!
============
1 Sv = 100 rads
Jerry - Read your post regarding the report of a 400
mSv/hr radiation measurement at the Fukushima plant (got there via
Instapundit). Thought you should know of errors. ! Sv is equal to 100 rads
(not 1 rad). Also, a typical effective dose for a two view (AP and LAT)
chest x-ray is 0.1 mSv (not 15 mSv). See for example:
http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/safety/index.cfm?pg=sfty_xray
Thought you should know.
I am an Associate Professor of
Medicine and Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I
teach diagnostic x-ray imaging physics in the Medical Physics graduate
program here.
Regards,
Michael S. Van Lysel, Ph.D.
Thank you. I never heard of Sievert units until
this came up. I use 15 millirem as the working level of chest x-rays. Some
sources say 10. Conversion to Sievert units is not something I usually do.
My intent was to show order of magnitude limits, and I am now quite sure
that the worst case here is a radiation leak lower than Tsar Bomba (and of
course nothing like megatons of energy release). A back of the
envelope approach to finding the upper limit of disaster.
I would much appreciate a paragraph or so on the
various units used in these measures and reports.
=============
Worst Case FD & The Media
Just a quick thought. You seem to have singled out Fox
News among the panic mongers. I've seen both ABC and Fox News coverage back
to back, more than once, as events have unfolded, and while Fox's "news"
coverage hasn't distinguished itself positively, it certainly doesn't
warrant being distinguished negatively.
That said, Glenn Beck, for whom Fox should be credited
good or bad, has had some of the most rational commentary on the reactor
events, unlike a certain media-whore physics professor of Asian extraction.
While Beck has erred somewhat in his demonstrations, his presentation has
been far more accurate than any I've seen in broadcast media.
It's a sad state of the media when a self-confessed
ex-rodeo-clown/former-disc-jockey is the one presenting the most accurate,
in-context explanation of nuclear physics in the entire American broadcast
media.
Tom Kelley Charlotte, NC
I may be too hard on Fox, but I was vastly
disappointed with their coverage; I expected better from them. I didn't
expect CNN even to try to get things right. Fox I expected better. I do
not regularly watch Beck.
My attempt was a back of the envelope limit
calculation. I stand by it. Worst case is Tsar Bomba, and we all survived
that. In fact the latest projections are that no one off the site will be
seriously harmed. That could change if the broken confinement pool
continues to leak as fast as they pour water into it. Exposed used fuel
rods can be highly dangerous for several weeks.
=============
something you didn't know about "wind power"
Friends, Here is an aspect of "green energy" I'll
wager you didn't know.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
home/moslive/article-1350811/
In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean
-green-wind-power-experiment-
Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
Martin Lee Rose
"The international community seems incapable of organizing a panic aboard a
doomed submarine" (wish I knew)
===================
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Wednesday
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